The
Greatest Film Franchises of All-Time: In general terms,
film franchises are multi-picture stories, often including some of
the same characters from film to film. Although film series have
been around for many decades (e.g., the Tarzan films, the Sherlock
Holmes films), film franchises really became a major cinematic
fact of life since the 1970s, beginning with the Planet of the
Apes series, the James Bond series-franchise and then
the Star Wars films. The corporate mentality, that began
to look on films as "products," thereby named a series
of films as "franchises."

Franchises have become even more
important than individual stars. They consist of connected universes
(Marvel's
Cinematic Universe, Middle Earth, and the DC Extended
Universe), lots of spin-offs (reboots and remakes), and many
sequels (or prequels). Most of the major franchises that are profitable
have at least three films
and have made over $450 million (domestic).
Some of the more recent franchises have been derived from films going
way back, such as Superman, Star Wars, Planet of the Apes, Alien, and James
Bond.

Films that are considered franchises in this compilation
meet most of these criteria (in summary):

they normally have at least three significant
films in the series (including sequels)

the major franchises usually have a combined gross
box-office (domestic) revenue income (unadjusted for inflation)
of at least $450 million, although some of the older franchises
haven't attained that level. [Note: Reissues are usually not
included, nor are income totals for merchandising.]

in terms of genre popularity, fantasy/adventure,
horror and sci-fi films fare the best as crowd-pleasing franchises
(with generous doses of action, violence and PG-rated content),
featuring big-name stars and big budget production values.

See Greatest
Film Franchises: Box-Office Results
for the Ranking of the Franchises by Domestic Revenue TotalsPart 1 | Part
2 | Part 3 | Part
4 | Part 5

Film
Franchises: Some Additional Considerations, Qualifications, and
Notes:

With the continued release of new films in many of
the top franchises-series, it's difficult to say when any
one franchise attains # 1 status in terms of its box-office totals,
although recent data now confirms that the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise
has overtaken the Harry Potter franchise as the most commercially-successful
(domestic) movie franchise of all-time, beating even Star Wars and James
Bond, although the Pixar-Disney animations (if they can
be counted as a franchise) have very significant totals. In terms of
inflation-adjusted (domestic) totals, the order of top franchises
changes, beginning with Star Wars, followed by James
Bond, Marvel's Cinematic Universe, and Harry Potter.

Recently, the trend in movie-making has been away from
franchise sequels (with numbers in the film title) to "origin
stories" or reboots of the original, such as Batman Begins
(2005) or Star Trek (2009) - including some with original
titles, such as X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) or Terminator
Salvation (2009). Although it has been expected that a series
of franchise films will secure box-office success, not all successful
first films have generated profitable sequels (with the hopes of
becoming major franchises) - i.e. Jaws: The Revenge (1987), Caddyshack
II (1988), Son of the Mask (2005), and Deuce Bigalow:
European Gigolo (2005) are but a few examples.

Almost every film franchise has been included here,
even The Rambo series, The Exorcist films,
the Muppets films,
the Pink Panther series, the Final Destination films,
the Jackass films - and many many more, which fell below $300
million in revenue (as a series). However,
it was thought important to include lesser franchise films (in terms
of revenue), such as the Godfather films, Romero's Dead series,
Raimi's Evil Dead films, and the Tarzan series
(with Weissmuller and O'Sullivan), since all of them have had either
longevity and/or unique appeal. In the cases of Home Alone, Rambo and
the Jaws and Exorcist franchises, each film had
a major blockbuster to start (Note: Rambo's second film
was the big one), but then dropped off considerably with their next
few sequels.

Many of the biggest blockbuster film franchises have
not received high marks for film-making quality either, with some
exceptions (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the first Shrek film,
the first two The Godfather films, etc.). Some of the factors
that have spelled the end of franchises have included aging stars,
the high-salary demands of actors, accelerating expenses, unoriginal
and unsatisfactory plot-lines and an over-reliance of CGI and special
effects (the Star Wars prequels, for example), and the end
of source-materials (such as in the case of the filmed Harry
Potter books).